jQuery find element in variable

Question

I have:

var html_data = '<div class="div1">something</div><div id="this_is_it">Hello!</div>';

How do I check if the html_data var has div this_is_it ?

Trying to check using

if($(html_data).find('#this_is_it').length)

but is not working....

Answer 1

.find() only searches children of the elements it's given, not the top-level elements. So you need to wrap everything in another <div>. Also, you need to fix the quoting problem that causes a syntax error -- if you use double quotes inside the string, use single quotes to delimit it, or vice versa (or escape the quotes).

var html_data = '<div class="div1">something</div><div id="this_is_it">Hello!</div>';
if ($("<div>" + html_data + "</div>").find("#this_is_it").length) {
  console.log("found");
} else {
  console.log("not found");
}

<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.11.1/jquery.min.js"></script>

Answer 2

If you would just like to run a check just use indexOf() .

Example 1 :

var html_data = '<div class="div1">something</div><div id="this_is_it">Hello!</div>';

document.write(html_data.indexOf("this_is_it") > 1 ? true : false)

OR

Example 2:

FYI: Checking if length of this_is_it is greater than 1.

if(html_data.indexOf("this_is_it") > 1){

//do something here

}

Hope this helps..